I hope you were as excited as I was during President Obama's State of the Union address when he urged Congress to pass what he referred to as the Kennedy-Hatch bill. The actual name of the bill is the Serve America Act, which would significantly increase the number of national service participants, as well as increase the ability for people to serve at any age. This means incorporating service learning at a younger age, giving tax incentives to companies that give their employees paid leave for a full year of service and better use the skills of retired volunteers.
This past fall, as the Youth Commissioner for the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service, I attended the National Commissioner's Institute. While there, I spent some time with a few of Iowa's congressional representatives and talked to them about the importance of the Serve America Act.
The service opportunities in this bill would specifically focus on solving some of our nation's biggest challenges: the drop out epidemic; preparing and responding to disaster; improving health care for low income communities and much more.
While Congress has historically viewed service as a "nice thing to do" service has always played an important role in addressing major community and national issues. For example, this past summer national service participants involved in AmeriCorps responded and mobilized to assist during and after the Iowa disasters. Service is a part of the solution to many of the problems facing the country. It is exciting that Congress realizes service is more than just someone giving a few hours. It is helping nonprofits build infrastructure to have the capacity to use volunteers to make lasting change in their communities.
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